Collective Intelligence and its potential to create a ‘Super Idea’

“One of the Web's basic tenets is that small contributions from lots of people can amount to something powerful in the aggregate” says John D Sutter, from the CNN news network. This is what drives collective intelligence. Emma has outlined what collective intelligence is. Through this post I aim to demonstrate the sheer potential of Collective intelligence.

Like I had mentioned before Google allows us to tap into a vast amount of information through internet searches. Wikipedia allows us access to the expertise of a wide variety of scholars within seconds with just the click of a button. The biggest advantage of collective intelligence is its potential to never stop growing. This is because of the truth that although an expert can participate in a group task as easily as an average person, collective intelligence reflects the group work of a lot of people despite their level of intelligence, and although this may seem to average out, the strategic application of collective intelligence will be able to filter out any of the irrelevant information resulting in the compilation of the best work, no matter where it comes from.

This may sound confusing so here are a few examples that illustrates how the genius of many individuals have come together to form what Mel, Emma and I fondly call a ‘Super Idea’.

"Twitter users are banding together to write an opera for London's Royal Opera house. Bands like My morning Jacket and sour, out of Japan are turning to fans to help film their music videos. Programmers are pulling quotes from social networks to make automated poems. More than 50,000 animators are divvying up work on an upcoming film called "live music" and amateur videographers are re-filming " Star Wars" in 15 second bites" (Sutter. J D, CNN)

Besides this, the website shown to us by our guest lecturer from Google, inbflat.net, features musicians playing different instruments in b flat, and supports a program that allows us to create a melody of our own in b flat using the data submitted by them.

Collective intelligence hence, seems to be a tool that can be used by almost anyone that is even remotely technology savvy, to create a bigger and better picture (again metaphorically speaking). It hands to us the opportunity to create something new and exciting with the help of other individuals with similar interests.

Food for thought:

Who needs IQ, when clearly CI (collective intelligence) has a greater potential.